This article traces aspects of citizenship education in the junior and senior geography syllabuses in NSW. Its purpose is to inform current debate on the need for an increased role for citizenship education in our curriculum and, in that context, on the ways in which one subject, geography, has proved capable of embodying several quite different approaches to citizenship education. Three traditions of citizenship education, as propounded by Barr, Barth and Shermis, will be used to aid the analysis.